Effect of Consumption of Cocoa-Derived Products on Uric Acid Crystallization in Urine of Healthy Volunteers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of consumption of different cocoa-derived products on uric acid crystallization in urine of 20 healthy volunteers. Participants were requested to select the specific diet that they wished to follow during the 12 h prior to collection of urine. The only restriction was that the diet could not include any product with cocoa, coffee, or caffeine. On the first day, each volunteer followed their selected diet, and an overnight 12 h urine sample was collected as the baseline urine. After seven days on an unrestricted diet, each volunteer repeated the same diet with 20 g of milk chocolate, chocolate powder, or dark chocolate during breakfast and another 20 g during dinner. Overnight 12 h urine samples were then collected. Urine volume, pH, oxalate, creatinine, uric acid, theobromine, and a uric acid crystallization test were determined for each sample. The results for all 20 patients show that uric acid crystallization was significantly lower following the consumption of chocolate powder or dark chocolate relative to baseline or following the consumption of milk chocolate. The results indicated that increased concentrations of urinary theobromine reduced the risk of uric acid crystallization.

High-Protein Diet Induces Hyperuricemia in a New Animal Model for Studying Human Gout

“…A high-purine diet, which is one of the risk factors for gout, is usually associated with a high-protein diet, such as seafoods, meats, viscera and so on [33,46]. In addition, HPD also elevated oxidative stress in rats and coupled with urate level increased in the cerebral cortex and hypothalamus in rats [47].…”

Cocoa ameliorates renal injury in Zucker diabetic fatty rats by preventing oxidative stress, apoptosis and inactivation of autophagy

“…52 Thus, epicatechin and procyanidins seem to contribute in the maintenance of renal function and structure during diabetes. 17,33,35,42 In addition, theobromine alone can protect against uric acid crystallization, 53 and in combination with cocoa flavanols enhance their protective vascular effects, 54 which also seem to participate in the preservation of kidneys. It is also worth mentioning that, using the body surface area normalisation method, 55 the amount of cocoa employed in the present animal study is equivalent to a daily dose of 64.5 g cocoa, containing 1075 mg polyphenols, for a 60 kg human.…”

Comparison of Two Dietary Supplements for Treatment of Uric Acid Renal Lithiasis: Citrate vs. Citrate + Theobromine

“…Samples of 24 h urine were collected at baseline to verify satisfaction of the admission criteria and 2 h urine collected after overnight fasting at baseline and after each stage of treatment. Treatment efficacy was evaluated by a test specially designed to measure the ability of urine to inhibit the crystallization of UA (a risk of UA crystallization (RUAC) test) [ 14 ] and urinary theobromine was measured using HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography), as previously described [ 19 ].…”

“…We recently demonstrated that dietary theobromine is a potent inhibitor of UA crystallization in humans [ 13 , 14 ]. Theobromine is abundant in chocolate and cocoa [ 15 ].…”